The Sea Does Not Dream Of You
by OhSoDeadly
Summary: Samuel was no stranger to escaping his past. But all at once, his past became the present, became the future, became his end, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. NEW CHAPTER: Sokolov laments his life.
1. Samuel

The dull put-put-put of the engine had been swallowed up by the furious roar of the tempest. The guiding lever was slick with seawater, as was the rest of his boat. Samuel spat out a mouthful of foul-tasting ocean and pulled his other hand up to wipe his brow. Lot of good it did him-the wind carried the spray straight into his face.

He could barely see, but he didn't have to. The Wrenhaven was a long way behind him. This was not the place he had navigated in the past few months, past crumbling city walls and through man-made inlets, with nothing but the occasional lamp-buoy and rusting whaler for company. He was as alone as he'd ever been.

Perhaps, he thought grimly, even more than after Cecelia had left him. Though his memory of that time was foggy, so what would he know?

Now, though, out on this sea that seemed determined to finally kill him, he felt the threads binding cruel memory loosen. Everything was falling apart. Everything. She left him because of the sea, hadn't she? Said his first love would always be the sea. Gone the next day, without so much as a goodbye, or a letter, or a lock of her hair, or whatever the hell women were supposed to leave behind when they left.

_Ward us, Samuel, you sound like a bad Tyvian romance novel._

It came back to haunt him, even during the Loyalist conspiracy. That was why he stayed in the boat all the time, right? Feigning engine trouble, or pleading some sort of rest from his labours. She was a good girl, a good servant, and it was wrong for the others to treat her like something they'd scraped off the bottom of their boots. But whenever the meek redhead appeared, or tried to talk to him, he'd always make his excuses and leave. The mere fact their names were the same was too much to handle. So back to the boat. Back to the water.

That was why he'd stayed true to the sea, he figured. The sea was rough, and unmerciful, but he loved it all the same. That was just a fact of life, wasn't? You just ended up loving things that wouldn't love you back. Sailors, servants, noblemen, Overseers and everything in between-they all fell for the same shitty joke.

Even that Outsider-damned bastard Corvo. All for Emily, was it? Did that excuse the slit throats and slaughtered innocents he'd left behind? Did that excuse becoming so good at what others made you do that it was just a perfect way of setting aside all decency and compassion, an instant ticket out? _No better than the people you've killed-_

He felt something judder and shake beneath his boots, and a huge plume of smoke starting billowing into the air. Swearing, he threw himself to the stern and pried open the maintenance hatch. Damnable thing never was in any good shape-

A shadow fell over him, and Samuel cast his gaze upward. His eyes took in the sight.

One of the biggest waves he'd ever seen. Bigger than the ones off Pandyssia.

Amongst all that rain and sleet, the roaring of a cruel ocean that didn't love him, had never loved him, could never love him, time slowed to a crawl. His ears, deafened, translated everuthing around him into an eerie quiet. He looked down at his hands, tight around the steering handle in a white-knuckle grip. They were hands that had done their best to avoid violence. To do good works.

For all the good they did him, when the rest of his body was rotten to the core. He coughed violently. Damned plague. It got everyone, eventually. Not even Sokolov had found a cure. Failure. Something else that everyone shared, whether they had been born high or low.

Now, this wave.

In decades past, he might've managed it. He might have been young enough, strong enough, bold enough, to try to plow straight through it, to cheat death, even as he was surrounded by it. But those times were long past. His time here was done. The void beckoned.

Well, he'd been right, hadn't he? And even when the wave smashed his poor vessel to bits and he felt the pull of the currents start dragging him down, deep into the cold dark abyss, he thought:

_Too much love will kill you._


	2. Piero

Time. He just needed more time.

But like kingsparrow feathers, Tyvian ore and those dear little apricot tartlets he'd come to crave, time was in short supply. In fact, he couldn't remember a time when he felt so _stretched._ Not even when he had cowered in this very building, with his rival-turned-reluctant-ally Sokolov, waiting for the city watchmen outside to get through the doors and cut them, or shoot them, or set them on fire, or whatever other ghastly demise they could concoct. He had never liked the city watch. They were unmitigated brutes, all of them. Always knocking in doors, barking orders, disrupting the careful work of intellectuals such as himself. In fact, he would bet that no-one else in this accursed city had suffered as much as him-

Piero stumbled, and brought a hand to his head. He could almost feel the poison swirling around, eating into his thoughts, making his actions wearied and slow. _No! _It would not be the end of him. The great Piero would die someday, yes, but on _his _terms, and not at the insidious hands of a plague that was spread by rats. He would find the cure. He would succeed where Sokolov had not. He would prevail, and once again hunt through the world for knowledge, unmolested by city watchmen, rats or anything else!

The thought of the Royal Physician made him turn groggily, and look towards a corner of the workshop downstairs, where he had placed him. Sokolov had been no lightweight, and Piero's physical attributes were less than desirous, yet he'd somehow managed to take the poor bastard downstairs without adversely hurting him. As it turned out, by the time he'd wiped the sweat from his forehead and re-adjusted his spectacles, it had been for naught. The man had passed on, taken by the plague he had fought so hard to defeat.

If-no, when-Piero lived, he would compose a great sonnet detailing Sokolov's life, and his own pursuit of enlightenment in a decidedly unenlightened world. He owed him that, surely enough. Perhaps the man had been a swine during his time at the Academy, but they'd more or less reconciled during their brief time in the workshop, before Corvo had come and rescued them.

Piero let out a great sigh, his headache worsening as he rummaged about in a drawer for the implements he required. _Corvo._ Living proof that a man could be given great tools, great responsibilities, and still end up a monster. And yet, was not he also proof that a man, under enough pressure, would break? Would become insensate to the suffering he caused, all done in the name of one person?

Well, to the Void with him now. The bloodthirsty brute was long gone with Samuel, due for a reckoning with Admiral Havelock and the rest of the conspirators. Despite his disdain for the former Lord Protector, Corvo wished him all the best. They deserved to pay for their disgusting attempts at manipulating Emily. Not to mention trying to kill him! Him! Piero the great!

At last, he finally found what he was looking for. A metal tube, with a small glass bulb on the end. Hurriedly, he snatched up a scalpel from a discarded tray and scrambled down the stairs, nearly tripping twice. Sokolov had been hanging on for an inordinately long time before he'd succumbed to the plague. Fortunately, he'd not shown any signs of becoming a weeper, which was odd. Perhaps it had something to do with the sheer amount of elixir he'd consumed. Or his general proximity to the main Elixir Distillery. Whatever it was, his blood might contain properties that could form the basis of a cure. It was worth a try.

He stumbled over to Sokolov's shroud-wrapped corpse, fumbling with the tube. He would have to be very careful, lest the smell of blood attract more rats-

Suddenly he doubled over, his gorge rising. Before he could control himself, Piero sprayed bloody vomit all over the floor. Gagging on the foul taste, he feebly wiped away traces of it from his mouth, and crawled over to Sokolov's body. He was almost there. He just-

The pain was overwhelming. It commanded him to stop. To let the inevitable happen. Piero wanted to fight. He would not be beaten so easily. But he was only mortal, and the plague was all-consuming.

As he slowly fell unconscious, Piero tried to think of a plan. A solution. Anything that would get him out of this.

But the only thing that would have done that was time. And he was out of that.


	3. Sokolov

Patterns repeat.

It was during his tenure at the Academy of Natural Philosophy that he had noticed the strands of fate, chance and destiny weaving together in what was undoubtedly a concerted and intended design. His first thesis was meant to explain how, in a world subject to the insidious influences of the Outsider and other pervasive forces, the only certain thing was prior experience. Similar factors producing similar results. Recurring events would inevitably lead to the same conclusion. It was far too messy and chaotic, he postulated, to trust to the otherworldly, fickle choices of something as quaint as a god or an all-powerful, benign force. No, apart from the Outsider, who made his presence all too obvious with the numerous shrines and relics left behind, there was only one sure moderator of chaos and randomness: patterns. He recalled the sourness he felt as he scanned the document when it had been returned to him.

_Name: Anton Viktor Sokolov  
Course: Cosmology and the Inner Workings of our World  
Thesis: "The Valleys of Strife: A Discourse on the Patterns Implicit in Nature"  
Grade: C-  
Comments: Main discussion too vague and reliant upon dubious sources. Too much theorising and final postulations lacking convincing evidence. Gratuitous use of anachronistic texts on the subject._

He spent many a night inside the Eminent Library, pulling dusty tomes of the shelves till he could have made a fort out of them. Like the ice-and-stone ones he had built with his friends during his youth in Tyvia. But there the similarity ended, for there was no laughter in his heart when he scanned the spidery handwriting in these books. Superstition was something that never went out of fashion. For every tale of magic and mystery, there was a work disproving it. Then another disproving that. And so on.

Until one night, when he'd almost given up and the candle had been about to gutter out, he found a slim book-not a tome, but a journal. It was so old it had nearly withered away, but the words inside were unmistakeable. THE OUTSIDER WALKS AMONG US. Whoever this had belonged to, had felt the touch of the Outsider. And rather than fear, he felt a thrill creep up his spine. Here, at last, was something conclusive!

Excitement had turned to dread, then outright horror, when he read the secrets within. Amongst the endless mantra and pictures of…whales? He learned what the Outsider had imparted to the author. In a surprisingly cogent burst of writing, the author named himself. He had been a scholar, just like Sokolov, and had never wanted for anything. Until his beautiful and cold wife, Lady Carsephia, had been found brutally murdered. The scholar had woken to see his wife's bloodied corpse sprawled on the rug and with no idea of how he'd gotten there.

The Outsider had drawn him into the void and "explained" things to him. Here Sokolov felt a brief frustration, as the author once again spiralled into madness and did not elaborate. But it paled in comparison to what he felt when he read from there.

Everything he'd said in his thesis had been true. All of it. There was nothing out there. No sentient force guiding people. No intricately designed master plan. Just chaos, and more chaos. An all-consuming void that would one day swallow the world, swallow everything, and nothing more would come after. And the Outsider watching all of it with a malicious grin and eyes as black as jet.

He'd resigned from his placement the next day, sold everything he had. He put together an expedition to Pandyssia. No-one had ever returned from there, but he felt a conviction unlike anything he had ever felt. He needed to know more. He needed to know more. The thirst for knowledge was nothing new to him, but this…this was beyond knowledge. This was desperation.

Even when he eventually did return, even when Rosebarrow had stumbled across the greatest scientific discovery in their history and he went to him with plans to usher Dunwall into a golden age-even after Jessamine died, blast it all-the terror stayed with him. Perhaps, underneath a thick black beard and beady eyes, it did not show, but it was always there. Driving him to create new ways to keep the scum and illiterate of the city in their place, new ways to kill.

And then the plague.

He coughed again, and lifted his head from the desk he had sat down at some hours ago. He could not concentrate enough to work out how long it had been. The thumping sound of his heart had crept to his ears and everything looked hazy and indistinct. There was no doubt about it. The rat plague had finally found him. Only a matter of time, of course.

He tried to speak up, but managed only a grizzled mumble. He tried again. "Piero. Piero." The sound echoed off the walls of the workshop. No response. Not so much as a clatter.

The man must have gone. Fled, just like Corvo. Oh, perhaps he'd spoken differently-_"I'm going to save Emily and put an end to this treachery once and for all"_-but Sokolov was no fool, even with a disease pumping through his body. Emily was tangential at best. What Corvo wanted was to continue his rampage throughout the city. From the aristocracy to the gangs, from the Flooded District to Kingsparrow Island, everyone would feel his presence. Few would survive it.  
He sighed, and let his head drop again. Well, no matter now. No matter anything. The end was near, Maybe his head had been in the stars, his mind in the universe, but his body was firmly rooted here, and it was about to succumb. For a moment, he mourned the loss of his brain. It had always been a tool of greatness. So sharp, so able to pierce the veil of ignorance that obscured knowledge in this shit world. It would be snuffed out like a candle.

He wondered where Piero had gone. He had certainly not wondered when he had been dismissed from the Academy. But the man had won out in the end, hadn't he? Piero had gone on to work for something he believed in. Something noble, before man's essential malice took over and twisted the conspiracy. Whereas he had made terrible things, walls of light and firebombs, for men who would have used them on the city wholesale if it had meant a rise to power.

And now Piero was elsewhere, while he was here dying of plague.

Patterns repeat.

_When he finally did succumb, mere moments before Piero arrived back from the Hound Pits with fresh elixir, he found himself standing in a blackness. A young man stared across at him. His eyes were even darker._

"Why?" he asked.

The young man shrugged. "You weren't interesting enough."  



End file.
